Conceived as a second edition to Kawakami's acclaimed A Self-Conscious Art, which was the first full-length study in English of Patrick Modiano’s work, this book has been comprehensively updated with two new chapters, notably discussing the author's recent work and his Nobel Prize win. Kawakami shows how by parodying precursors such as Proust or the nouveau romanciers, Modiano's narratives are built around a profound lack of faith in the ability of writing to retrieve the past through memory, and this failure is acknowledged in the discreet playfulness that characterises his novels.
This welcome update on the work of one of the most successful modern French novelists will be essential reading for scholars working on contemporary French writing.

Akane Kawakami is Senior Lecturer in French Literature at Birkbeck, University of London. She has written numerous articles on modern and contemporary French and Francophone literature, and is the author of A Self-Conscious Art: Patrick Modiano’s Postmodern Fictions (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000); Travellers’ Visions: French Literary Encounters with Japan, 1881-2004 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005); and Photobiography: Photographic Self-Writing in Proust, Guibert, Ernaux and Macé (Oxford: Legenda, 2013). She has also published two books of essays in Japanese, introducing aspects of English culture to a Japanese readership.